Sudhir Patwardhan

Exhibited in Sudhir Patwardhan's solo show at Jehangir Art Gallery in 1992 and chosen as the exhibition catalogue's cover illustration, Introspect shows an artist in his studio looking down at a figure within a painted landscape. At first glance, the canvas upon the floor resembles a mirror, and the painter seems absorbed in a moment of self-observation. The power of such works is described by art critic Kamala Kapoor:

'... the painter provides us with various entry points: the semi-psychological registers of his charged spaces that draw us into "Artist and Model" for instance - an autobiographical journey towards self discovery, where Patwardhan paints his protagonist self from the imagination and not the mirror, meanwhile dividing his model into a doppelganger split personality to play out conflicts between feelings.' 

(K. Kapoor, Sudhir Patwardhan Paintings (exhibition catalogue), Jehangir Art Gallery, Bombay, 1992, unpaginated)